Demonstration in Montreal last month against the so-called ‘Charter of Values’
Another excellent comment piece by Haroon Siddiqui in the Toronto Star., demolishing the Quebec government’s proposal to ban the hijab and other (non-Christian) religious symbols.
For a project that has been framed by its authors as an important step toward equality of the sexes, the Charter of Quebec Values is managing to upset a lot of women.
On Wednesday, it was the turn of the organization representing provincial women’s centres to issue a stark warning about the damage the charter proposals are causing before they even become law. The group, R des centres des femmes du Québec, said that the debate over the charter, which would ban such religious symbols as the Muslim hijab and Jewish kippa from the public service, is provoking violence against Muslim women.
At a meeting last week, the organization representing 97 centres across the province heard of dozens of recent incidents in which Muslim women wearing headscarves were targeted. “Women are being shoved, insults, denigrated,” the group said in a statement. “Some have even been spit on in the face. The impacts of the debate over the charter are undeniable.”
Demonstration against the ‘Charter of Values’ in Montreal last month
A majority of Quebecers – 62 per cent – oppose firing public servants who insist on wearing religious symbols at work, according to a poll conducted for CTV News.
The Parti Quebecois’ proposed Charter of Quebec Values would ban public employees from wearing prominent religious symbols, such as headscarves and turbans, in the workplace – although it has not said what the consequences of defying the charter would be.
The Ipsos Reid poll found that 38 per cent of Quebecers agreed with, and 62 per cent disagreed, with the statement: “Public servants like teachers, health care workers and others should be fired from their jobs if they insist on wearing religious symbols and clothing at work.”
Across Canada, 72 per cent opposed the statement, while 28 per cent agreed.
A federal judge on Tuesday revisited a decades-old court settlement restricting how the New York Police Department conducts surveillance after civil rights lawyers accused the department of breaking those rules by monitoring Muslims.
The dispute centers on the restrictions set by the Handschu decree, which was put in place in response to surveillance used against war protesters in the 1960s and ’70s. The decree was relaxed following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks to allow police to more freely monitor political activity in public places.
The National Post has invited its readers to give their views on Quebec’s controversial “Charter of Values”. Some letters oppose the repressive legislation, but the majority are in favour, and even those against the Quebec government’s proposals often back a complete ban on the niqab.
Good article by Haroon Siddiqui in the Toronto Star.
The PQ’s proposed Charter of Values is continuing to raise a ruckus, as another group has announced its opposition to proposed legislation – making a demand for “inclusive secularism.”
The new group, Quebec Muslims for Rights and Freedoms, believes individuals should be free to wear whatever religious symbols they choose, and say the province should make policies without interfering with religious institutions.
The group represents 50 Muslim organizations across the province which collectively oppose the Charter that – if passed – would limit anyone wearing religious symbols from holding government positions.
An American-Islamic relations group released damaging information Wednesday that accuses the FBI of harassing friends of Ibragim Todashev. He’s the man an agent shot and killed in Orlando in May.
Deputies arrested Ashurmamad Miraliev on a warrant for threatening a witness in an Osceola County battery case from 14 months ago. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil liberties group, claims the real reason they brought him in was to question him about his friendship with Todashev.
The group said the FBI even asked some of Todashev’s friends to spy on local mosques and threatened to arrest them if they didn’t. “Didn’t ask him anything about the alleged charges. Just interviewed him for over six hours trying to get as much information on Ibragim Todashev as possible,” said Hassan Shibly, director of the Florida chapter of CAIR.
Voters in Switzerland’s Italian-speaking region on Sunday slapped a ban on wearing full-face veils, a move condemned by the country’s Muslim community and Amnesty International. Results from a referendum in the southern canton of Ticino showed that 65 percent of the electorate backed a proposal to forbid the covering of faces in public areas by any group.
Echoing bans in France and Belgium, the measure does not single out Muslims directly. It states that “no-one may mask or hide their face on the public highway, nor in places open to the public, except places of worship, nor those offering a public service”. But in a clear nod to the Islamic tradition of veils for women, it adds that “no-one may require another person to cover their face for reasons of gender”.
The measure was the brainchild of right-wing Ticino populist party “Il Guastafeste” – whose kingpin Giorgio Ghiringhelli [pictured] makes no secret of his criticism of Islam. “This is an historic vote for Ticino,” Ghiringhelli told Switzerland’s Italian-language broadcaster RSI. “And not just for Ticino, but also for Switzerland and abroad, where the Ticino example could spread.”
Join me in a criminal court in suburban Paris on almost any weekday and I’ll show you exactly where national debates about female face coverings end up.
Ever since France introduced its “burqa ban” in 2011, there has been a constant stream of wretched cases involving the handful of Muslims who choose to wear such garments. Not only are perfectly upstanding women being fined for their choice of dress, principally the full-body niqab, which leaves a slit for the eyes, but an increasing number of defendants are being tried for attacking them.
One case involves two self-styled “patriotic vigilantes” who targeted a pregnant 21-year-old in the commuter town of Argenteuil, north-west of Paris, in June. The new law persuaded the men to shout racist insults before putting the woman in hospital, where she lost her baby. Another three reported cases on the same council estate over the course of just one month this summer saw full-veil wearers assaulted as their attackers shouted: “Dirty Arab, dirty Muslim.”
Those calling for a veil ban in Britain have clearly ignored such depressingly routine cases. They do not realise how the legislation introduced by President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government has not only stigmatised Muslim women, but somehow legitimised physical attacks on them. The ban in France is a hateful assault on basic freedoms, one that has been seized on by an unlikely alliance of rightwing politicians and feminists.
Excellent article by Nabila Ramdani in the Observer, 22 September 2013